AI-enabled Digital Acquisition Management (ADAM) Platform

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary technology that is poised to change how wars are waged as well as potentially change how society operates. Corporate investment in AI between 2015 and 2022 was $253.25 billion and in 2023 the global AI market was valued at $142.3 billion. The DoD’s fiscal budget request for AI in 2024 was $1.8 billion, revealing a staggering difference between corporate and DoD investment dollars. This is a drastic switch in roles: Cutting-edge commercial technology is typically adapted from military applications; with AI, the DoD must use commercial technologies to derive new military capabilities. This is a new fundamental way of thinking for the DoD and acquiring these AI tools and services has required the creation of its own set of protocols and guidelines for acquisition and contracting officers to follow. To ensure acquisition and contracting officers have the tools that they need to quickly understand and procure AI technologies, Team Azimuth is proposing the creation of an AI-enabled Digital Acquisition Management Platform (ADAM). The ADAM virtual platform will serve as a reference tool for acquisition and contracting officers that will virtualize and present newly established protocols and guidelines in an easy-to-understand format. It will employ a generative AI-chat bot feature that will allow users to interact with the platform and ask it questions as if they were talking to an expert on the subject. AI acquisition officers can use the ADAM platform to quickly understand the most authoritative guidelines when it comes to AI and quickly implement them. A large bottleneck in the acquisition process now in the acquisition of these AI technologies is left to only a handful of people across the whole of the DoD. To help solve the bottleneck, all acquisition officers need to feel confident in the AI services or tools that they are acquiring—and the ADAM platform will bring forth that confidence. Team Azimuth (Azimuth Corporation, Etegent Technologies, and Entegrity Consulting Group) is uniquely positioned to address this problem due to its combination of expertise in existing AI deployment experience and general AI/ML expertise across the DOD and IC. During Phase 1 of the project, Team Azimuth will work with a program sponsor to better address and fit requirements for acquisition officers; identify end-users within AFMC for platform beta-testing; begin the ATO process, and develop Agile Storyboards. A phase 2 follow-on will see full platform development and deployment, along with the incorporation of DoD and DAF AI guidance. The span of phase 2 will ensure that there is funding to adapt the framework as guidance is issued, amended then re-issued.